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Wednesday, 14 November 2012

NaNoWriMo Update #2

Yesterday, 13th November, I officially passed the half -way mark. Actually, I found getting to 10000 words more exciting. Maybe that's because it meant I'd actually got back into the flow of writing and now it's just happening...some days better than others, of course, but flowing along nicely. I can safely say that at least fifty percent of what I've written is absolute rubbish, but I expected that. I mean, for the last three chapters, my characters have been sailing to a mysterious island. All well and good if I knew anything about sailing, but somehow the boat at the beginning of the trip became a ship and I really don't know if it was sailing backwards, but with my knowledge of boating terms, it probably was. They got there though!

After the fiasco of losing all those words last week, I've been using Scrivener a lot more and I have to say, I've been finding it very useful. Here's a screen shot of one page -

As you can see, the central section is similar to any other word processor, but it's the features down the sides that I'm finding really useful for NaNoWriMo. On the left I had planned my chapters on little cards on the 'pinboard' (that appears up in the right hand top corner), but I've ended up adding extras as the story goes along because I'm useless at planning. Easy to do - just add an extra card in the right place and it slots in down the left hand side.

Then there's the other great feature down there on the bottom right - a place to remind myself of plot holes that I think of, but don't have time to go back and fix (there's a lot of those). I'm copying it all into Word, too, just for extra insurance, but I'm liking Scrivener more and more.

Trees Are Not Lollipops

This is my motto, first heard when I was five years old and asked to draw a tree. Our teacher looked at all the drawings we'd done and said, "They're lovely, but remember trees are not lollipops". She made us look at trees more closely and see what they really looked like. It helped me with my drawings, but now I apply it to everything. I don't accept what other people say about something or someone until I've looked carefully for myself.